This Owner’s Preparation Ensured the Best Deal Possible
Paul revisits his conversation with Kelly McFarland of Premier Rehab, sharing how 18 months of preparation and a professional process led to her partnership with Empower Physical Therapy.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of the Martin Rehab M&A advisory. Today we are going to look back at a conversation that we had one week ago with Kelly McFarland. Kelly is the CEO of Premier Rehab Physical Therapy. Premier is a six clinic business in Dallas Fort Worth market. And Kelly was a client of Martin Healthcare Advisors and successfully partnered her business with Empower Physical Therapy back in March 2020, right before the pandemic, and has been with Empower ever since, and is flourishing with Empower.
Empower is a private equity-backed company that is based out of Phoenix, Arizona with 50 plus clinics and they are located in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, and California. You know, Kelly's story is an amazing one and I love to tell it and I think we can all take some actions based on the interview that we did with Kelly last week. You know, Kelly was very clear. She wanted to continue to grow. She saw an external market out there that was strengthening. And I thought this was so key and critical to her story, which is she wanted to make sure that she took financial responsibility for her practice, which to me was saying that she believed she had grown her practice as far as she could grow it, but that there was more that she believed that she could do to make that practice fiscally sound and stronger.
And so she really believed that there were some things that needed to change. And I think that while she was prepared to do this on her own and continue to remain independent, she would only do that if she did not find the right fit. So, there was a decision for Kelly that she wanted to find a partner to strengthen her business financially. Taking that financial responsibility, but that if she didn't find the right partner, she didn't feel like she had to do it because we and she had worked for about 18 months strengthening her practice, preparing it for this market.
That is the perfect storm for a tremendous outcome. Kelly had improved her practice to a level that finding a partner was not her only path to success. So the focus became finding the right partner. And that is the position that you want to put yourself in. That you know where you want to go. You have strengthened your business to the point where you've gone about as far as you can go. And now it's time to find a company to take you to that next level. You know, Kelly had another real trait that we see very common in successful rehab business owners as well as companies that seem to be successful going into the market and that is a level of curiosity.
I have said this before, you know, whether there was a partner or not, we were able to very, you know, very efficiently coach Kelly to significantly improve her business. Why? Because she was curious. I advise all of you out there, remain curious. What I see as being curious is always wanting to know what can I do to improve myself? And when you're curious, you're listening, you're learning. You know, another strong advocate for a professional process was Kelly. Kelly used a professional M&A process and she believed that by getting face-toface with all of the different companies and the people that made up these companies was her was the single most important piece of the process that brought her to the best decision.
And Kelly also was very clear in saying she wanted to find a company that she could inspire her team to also move up in the ranks of that company. And the team was inspired by Kelly moving up in the ranks. So many of her staff have now moved up in the ranks at Empower. You know, it's a lesson that I learned many years ago. I had an uncle who had sold his business and unfortunately the owner of that business blamed everything on the acquiring company. And I learned this lesson when I was 18 years old.
He said it was so it was it was almost agony having to go in every day and listen to his boss complaining about the new company and all the things that they were making him do. Kelly took the exact opposite approach. She was inspired by some of the changes that were being made and she inspired her staff because she moved up in the ranks and so many of her staff have also moved up. She today has related to me that they have not lost any staff.
So this is a great example again of someone who could see very clearly into the future at where they wanted to go and she was not where she needed to be to take that step to get a partner. So Kelly worked internally went outside found us. We helped her improve that business to a point that it had significant value and it made a lot of sense for her to partner. So, I congratulate Kelly on that decision as well as on that path. If any of you out there are interested at taking a similar path to Kelly, click below and let's talk. Thank you.
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